Social Work: Historical Emergence, Development, and Societal Changes

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of the history, development, and societal impact of social work. It begins by defining human services and the role of social workers, specifically focusing on the historical emergence of social work in the 19th century, tracing its roots from philanthropic initiatives to its growth after the industrial revolution and the Great Depression. The essay details the challenges faced by social workers, such as deinstitutionalization, child labor, and women's rights, and highlights their achievements in these areas. It examines the relationship between social workers and their service users, emphasizing the changes in society resulting from their efforts. The essay also discusses the successes and downfalls of social workers, offering recommendations for maintaining and further developing the profession. Finally, it provides a conclusion summarizing the key points and the significant contributions of social workers to society.

UNDERSTANDING THE
HUMAN SERVICES

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
RECOMMENDATION...................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Human services can be defined as an approach that helps in meeting human needs
through wide knowledge base, by focusing on remedies and prevention of problems faced by
people in order to improve quality of life of the targeted population (Moorhead, Manthorpe and
Baginsky, 2019). There are various human service professionals who focus on promoting and
improving service delivery system, improving service quality in service delivery system. For this
essay Human service professional chosen is Social worker who focus on helping people who
need it. This essay will lay emphasis on historical emergence and development of social workers,
main changes and achievements, policy and legislation related to social workers, social worker’s
successes and downfalls and changes to society that might be linked to development of social
worker’s over time.
MAIN BODY
Emergence and Development of Social workers
Social workers are those professionals who focus on helping needful people in order to
improve social and health services, provide support to a community and many more. There are
various types of social workers who provide service to different kinds of service users (Winter
and Cree, 2016). First is child, family and school social workers who focus on resolving problem
of school children, school staff and family members. Sometimes it also includes placing children
in foster care homes. Another is medial and public health social workers who focus on helping
people who are seriously ill or are suffering from some chronic health problems. Third type of
social workers are mental health and substance abuse social workers.
Social workers as a profession emerged in 19th century whose main roots stated from
some private initiatives known as philanthropy which consisted on various private and personal
level initiatives taken buy people for good and welfare of public and to improve quality of life of
public. However, need of social work existed long before and there were various kinds of
religious communities or private charitable organizations already existed that mainly focused on
helping and providing service to needful people (Herrero and Nicholls, 2017). But it boosted
after industrial revolution and effects of great depression of the 1930’s that increased pressure on
social workers to become more definite, efficient and disciplined. After second world war
government were forced to reduce their social expenditure because of which need to social
workers emerged in order to reduce gap between rich and poor and reduce inequality. There was
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a period of social reform between 1960 to 1975 where major push to social welfare program was
focused on in order to reduce poverty and resolve other social problems faced by people.
Challenges and achievements
There were various kinds of challenges faced by social workers initially that they need to
overcome. Working on these challenges worked as achievement that further brought various kind
of development in social work over time (Hayes and Unwin, 2016). Some of the main challenges
and accomplishments associated with social workers that brought changes within policies and
legislations are as follows:
Deinstitutionalization and protection of dependent children: In late 19th century a movement
known as save child was started that focused on getting children out of street trades and poor
houses. This movement was one of the main reason that brought changes within children care
and reduced use of residential care in favour of family.
Expansion of adoption, foster care and guardianship: In order to increase children, care focus
on expanding foster care homes. In order to increase children, care various kinds of foster care
programs with combination with children saving programs were organized so that child care can
be increased.
Protection against child labour: Social workers are one of the main reason because of which
child labour law is in act today. They fought a long fight against child labour. In 19 th century
series of legislations were made to ban child labour and step by step social workers succeeded in
putting a ban on child labour (Coates and Hetherington, 2016). This struggle lead to first child
labour Act that banned child labour and protected children.
Women’s civil, political and human rights: Most of the social worker’s development were
done in 129th century. Many women social workers worked on women’s political, human and
civil rights and ultimately succeeded in providing justice to women so that they can enjoy their
rights in a better manner.
Fighting poverty injustice: Social workers play a vital role in reducing poverty injustice and
development of acts and legislations to reduce poverty injustice. Even today many social workers
are deeply committed to reduce poverty injustice and even today they are struggling a lot.
Child abuse prevention and protection: Another one of the main achievement of social
workers is protecting children from abuse. Child saving has always been one of the main and
major priority of social workers. Since years they have been continuously putting efforts to
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prevent child abuse and protect children from various kinds of abuse such as mental abuse,
sexual abuse and many more.
Relationship between social workers and their service users and changes in society due to social
worker’s development
Social workers have always fought for welfare of public and are still working for the
same. Their struggle, challenges faced by them have helped them to achieve various kinds of
achievement and have brought development within their profession (Payne and Askeland, 2016).
Not only this their challenges and development has also brought changes within the society.
Achievement of above challenges have helped social workers to enhance their overall
relationship with service users. Social workers focus on positively interacting with their service
users so that they can understand issues or problems faced by them so that they can provide
support to them, provide quality care to them and can also resolve problems or issues faced by
them. Till not struggle of social workers have helped them to bring various changes within
policies, acts and legislations and they are still working on bringing improvement within the
society. But one of the main challenge faced by them and are still facing is bringing change
within their service users mentality. Till a certain level they have achieved success and brought
changes within the society and bringing changes within thinking and mentality of people but still
they have a long way to go.
Many times different and orthodox thinking of society works as a barrier for social
workers that affects development or changes of social workers. They struggled a lot in bringing
changes within legislation related to child labour and development of people. They had to fight a
lot not only against the system but they had to fight against thinking and orthodox mentality of
their service users as well. But after a long fight they finally succeeded in bringing child
protection and child labour act in law. This also helped them in changing viewpoint and thinking
of the society and strengthened their relationship with their service users.
Successes and the downfalls of Social workers
There are various kinds of success and downfall of social workers that brought various
kinds of changes and development within their profession and way of working as well. Major
downfalls faced by Social workers was initially in 19th century as not only system but their
service users also did not support them (Dickens, 2016). They had to undergo a long journey in
order to bring development and changes with the society. One of the major downfall that social
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workers faced was educating people and changing their viewpoint towards the initiatives taken
by them. Any kind of initiative taken by social workers is not easily accepted by the society. For
one initiative they need to undergo various kinds of criticisms. But they have also successfully
brought various kinds of changes within the society and system as well. There are many acts and
legislations that have been brought into action because of initiatives taken by social workers such
as child protection and child labour act have been brought into practise because of initiatives
taken by social workers. Today bridge between rich and poor is quite lower and various parts of
England are poverty free is only because of success of movements created by social workers.
Many poor law union and poor law commission have been formed who Are responsible for
implementing and overseeing acts related to poverty.
RECOMMENDATION
Here are few recommendations that can help social workers maintaining their profession
and bringing further development within their profession. Organizations that employ social
workers should develop an organizational culture so that they can promote safety and security of
their staff members. Any kind of movement organized by social workers for betterment of
society should be violence and risk free and all kinds of risk and violence management should be
maintained by them as their first priority. Social workers should also focus on minimizing any
kind of risk or harm that can be created to their service users.
CONCLUSION
From the above essay it has been summarized that social workers have undergone various
kinds of changes and development by facing many challenges for well-fare and betterment of the
society. This essay has successfully highlighted historical challenges, changes, achievement and
development that social workers have undergone till now. This essay has also focused on
addressing all kinds of success and downfall of social workers.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journey
Coates, J. and Hetherington, T., 2016. Decolonizing social work. Routledge.
Dickens, J., 2016. Social work and social policy: an introduction. Routledge.
Hayes, S. and Unwin, P., 2016. Comparing the cultural factors in the sexual exploitation of
young people in the UK and USA: Insights for social workers. Revista de Asistenta
Sociala, (1). p.27.
Herrero, M.I.M. and Nicholls, J., 2017. Beyond legalism in turbulent times: re-grounding UK
social work in a richer international human rights perspective. Journal of Human Rights
and Social Work. 2(3). pp.74-85.
Moorhead, B., Manthorpe, J. and Baginsky, M., 2019. An examination of support and
development mechanisms for newly qualified social workers across the UK: Implications
for Australian Social Work. Practice. pp.1-15.
Payne, M. and Askeland, G.A., 2016. Globalization and international social work: Postmodern
change and challenge. Routledge.
Winter, K. and Cree, V.E., 2016. Social work home visits to children and families in the UK: A
Foucauldian perspective. The British Journal of Social Work. 46(5). pp.1175-1190.
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